


The Raider and the Runaway

by TeaNTea



Category: Elder Scrolls, Original Work, exophilia-fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Skyrim Fusion, Alternative history/fantasy-fusion, Blood and Injury, Eventual Smut, F/M, Healing From Past Abuse, Huddling For Warmth, Human/Monster Romance, Human/Orc love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Learning to trust men again, Medieval Medicine, Occasional Skyrim references, Orc Culture, PTSD symptoms, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Sharing Body Heat, Size Difference, Slow Burn, Trust Issues, gratuitous Old English names, mention of past sexual/domestic violence, what if orcs instead of Vikings?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:36:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaNTea/pseuds/TeaNTea
Summary: Cynewynn thought she had found a new home for herself, a better home where she could feel safe and create a happy life. It soon turns out that she has made a mistake and gone from bad to worse. She decides to flee north, by foot and with only what she can carry with her, and soon finds herself deep in ancient woods that are foreign to her. Then trouble finds her.---Set in an alternative history/fantasy-setting that answers the question: what if, instead of Vikings, early medieval Britain (and Ireland) had been invaded and settled by (Elder Scrolls') Orcs?
Relationships: Human/Orc
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	The Raider and the Runaway

**Author's Note:**

> [CW this chapter: brief descriptions of injury/blood; mention of presumed past sexual assault]
> 
> I've been lurking on here for the longest time, but shortly after finding, falling in love with, and reading practically all of the Orc-fics on here, this setting and fic manifested itself in my brain and wouldn't leave me alone until I got an account and started writing it! I haven't done any fiction writing in yeeeeears, so hopefully it's not too bad - comments and feedback much appreciated. 
> 
> And please note going forward that (against my own pro history nerd-judgement), though the alternative history is set in early 10th century England, for plot-reasons there will be the occasional historical inaccuracy/anachronism (e.g. paper production was definitely not known in Western Europe at this time buuut a later scene requires access to relatively inexpensive paper). But then again, the most basic spells in Skyrim (and perhaps some alchemy eventually) also exists in this world, so *shrug*? 
> 
> Also, for extra trivia points, names of people and places (unless Orsimer/Orcish) are Old English (phase of language spoken c. late-5th to 11th centuries) and I'll do my best for geography and geopolitics to match up and make sense with the early 10th century.

The spine-chilling howl of a wolf suddenly pierced through the trees. Cynewynn’s breath caught in her throat. The howl sounded much too close for comfort. The sun was already setting rapidly, and she now felt the chill of fear in her chest mingling with the chill of the autumn air slowly spreading through her extremities. She had not grown up in this shire and had never been this far north. She mentally kicked herself for not considering the dangers of crossing through these unknown woods, but was soon reminded, by a kinder and more compassionate part of her mind, that the only person she could have asked about such things was the very same man she was escaping from.

She picked up the pace, struggling through the dense undergrowth, while apprehensively scanning between the trees all around her. While she tried to tell herself that she was looking out for somewhere to shelter once it inevitably got too dark to safely carry on, her eyes kept darting nervously to anything that even vaguely resembled the shaggy greyish-brown of a wolf coat.

Half an hour passed without anything more remarkable happening than the bottom of Cynewynn’s gown getting caught in some brambles, despite her best attempts at hiking the skirts up, gathering them in her left hand. The initial adrenaline had begun to wear off. Though she was still scanning the surroundings, she was now more methodical, straining against the dusk in search of any natural feature that could provide protection for the night. The area around the barely visible path she followed had gradually gotten more craggy and uneven, as if it went over a broad ridge.

As her attention was caught by a majestic elm tree a hundred yards to the side of the overgrown path, she put her foot down without looking. There was a slight squelch of leaves on mud but, curiously, her foot just kept going. Next thing she knew, her stomach felt like it fell through the ground and she shrieked loudly as she slid down the ridge. Her left knee buckled under and behind her, causing her body to twist towards that side, while her extended right foot led the way. After what felt like an age, but in reality took merely a couple of seconds, she came to an abrupt halt as her outstretched leg collided with a large rock. The weight of her body with its momentum slammed her ankle into its unmovable surface, punctuated by a gut-wrenching crunch.

At first, the shock kept her from reacting or even moving from the position her body naturally landed in. Then, all at once, the pain rolled up through her leg like a wave. Her eyes watered and involuntarily she let out a strangled wail as she crumpled over her leg. After taking a few moments to brace herself she grabbed under her knee with both hands, gingerly pulling her foot back from the rock. Cold sweat broke out all over her forehead and she started hyperventilating. After what felt like an eternity of fighting to get her breathing back under control, she was able to sit up straight and focus on her surroundings again.

A pair of glowing yellow eyes were staring out from a clump of bushes about twenty feet in front of her. Cynewynn’s breath caught in her throat and she froze. In the sudden panic her mind went blank, unable to think of anything to do but stare back at the wolf in the desperate hope that it would keep it at bay.

The snapping of a twig broke the tense silence. It came from slightly behind her to the left and she whipped her head towards the sound. It was another wolf, stalking towards her so slowly the movement was barely perceptible.

The sight of the second wolf finally broke her paralysis and she started to desperately shuffle backwards to the right, where she had not seen any wolves laying in ambush, letting her useless leg be dragged along. This stirred the predators to approach faster, reassured by the clear display of her vulnerable state.

“Help! Please!” she screamed as loudly as she could, hoping against all hope that someone would come to her aid. She noticed the nearest wolf to her left coil itself up, readying its attack, and she dropped to her side on the ground and curled into a ball. She brought her left arm up to protect her head and throat mere moments before fangs sank, unhindered, through her woollen cloak and linen sleeve into the forearm.

White stars exploded in her eyes as she felt the bones in her forearm being crushed in the wolf’s powerful jaws. Instinctively, she struggled against its attempts to move her arm away to expose her throat and head. The claws of the second wolf came down on her hip and ripped through her clothes and skin as it attempted to turn her onto her back, but it barely registered as she struggled for her life with the first wolf. Blood trickled down her arm onto her forehead and temple.

Without warning, a deep booming roar rang out right behind her. In an instant the first wolf was yanked away, tearing a strip of flesh free from her arm as it went, followed by a thud and a high-pitched whimper as it landed several feet away. The bushes rustled as the wolves scrambled to flee as quickly as possible.

Cynewynn’s ears were ringing and she trembled uncontrollably. With her last remaining presence of mind, she managed to bring her bleeding arm to her chest and press her undamaged hand against the wound in an attempt to stem the flow. Blood had dripped into her eyes, and as she looked up from the ground trying to see who - or what - had saved her from the wolves, all she could see in the twilight was a blurred outline of a large, muscular being bending over her. She thought she could make out fur outlining its shoulders.

“Saved by… a bear?” she mumbled in a daze, mostly to herself. Black spots started forming at the edges of her vision, gradually growing bigger. The last sensation she registered was of strong, warm arms picking her up gently before complete nothingness overtook her.

———

With his long stride, Kadrun quickly made it to the abandoned cabin he had found, at the edge of a clearing on the other side of the ridge. The young human had stirred occasionally in his arms, her breathing quick and shallow, but she had not come to during his hurried dash back to the cabin. As he reached the door, he twisted his upper body to push it open with his shoulder, making sure he did not catch any of the woman’s dangling limbs on the door frame.

He glanced at her face. In the soft light of the fading fire in the corner of the room she was looking much paler than he had expected. He hoped his decision, to prioritise getting away from any returning wolves — or any other predators attracted by the smell of fresh blood — instead of attempting to staunch her bleeding arm immediately, had not been the wrong one. With even more urgency he put her down on the only bed in the room, unclasped her woollen cloak and untangled it from her limbs and shoved it to the floor. Grabbing a small knife from his boot he made short work of cutting the sleeve of her left arm open to better assess the damage. Although he was far from a stranger to gruesome battle injuries, he cringed as he realised he was seeing straight through to a mess of crushed bone fragments, barely obstructed by shredded muscle and tissue.

He took a deep breath to centre himself. Closing his eyes, Kadrun let the Word of Healing manifest in his mind. He could feel the familiar tingle in his fingertips and could see the flickering orange glow of the spell even through his eyelids. As he wrapped his hand around the woman’s damaged forearm she whimpered and turned her head away, but she did not open her eyes or say anything. When he felt too drained to keep up the low-level spell, he opened his eyes again and drew back his hand, panting slightly to catch his breath.

There was still a red, angry outline around the edges of the wound, and a couple of swollen rounded fang marks along one side, but the remaining muscles and tissue and skin had repaired themselves and spread across the arm once more. Unfortunately, the remaining flesh was no longer enough to cover the entire wound and he could tell that she would end up with a sizable scar.

Where flesh and skin were covering the wound almost entirely, he pressed his thumb in to assess the bones beneath. To his relief, where just moments earlier there had been a jumble of fragments, he now felt two firm forearm bones. At his prodding, the woman gasped and threw her eyes open. She scrambled feebly at his hand, trying to pull it away from her arm.

“ _I’m sorry, I’ll stop now. Sssh, ’s ok_ ,” he murmured softly in a low rumble, attempting to calm her down.

Though he realised he had forgotten himself in the moment and spoken in orcish, it seemed to have had the desired effect nonetheless. The small human let go of his hand and seemed to relax back onto the mattress, but her wide eyes did not seem able to focus on him or anything else. Soon her eyes fluttered shut again.

After a few more breaths to centre himself after the drain of using magic, Kadrun went to the large knapsack in the corner and rummaged for his medical supplies. Despite thoroughly poking through the smaller compartment where he kept them, he could only find two small vials of the all-purpose pain-relieving and healing tonic that he endeavoured to always keep on him. He glanced back at the woman. Though she was a complete stranger and not his own kind, her tear- and blood-stained face struck at the tender compassionate chord within him; a part of himself that he had often tried, and failed, to suppress.

To justify it to himself, he reasoned that making a fresh medicinal infusion would take too long. With a defeated sigh at his own softheartedness, he took one of the vials and a bunch of dried chamomile flowers from the pack and returned to the woman’s side. Crouching next to the bed, he spoke softly — remembering to use Ænglisc this time — to gently rouse her again.

“Hey. How you feeling now?”

She turned glazed-over eyes towards him and tried to focus on his face, opening her mouth slightly as if to say something, but she did not manage anything in response.

“I will sit you up so you can drink something. For the pain.”

Without waiting for a reply this time, he carefully wrapped an arm around her back and neck to help her sit up slightly. With his free hand he managed to get the cork off the vial and held it up to her lips.

“It is not tasty. Sorry,” he said and then quickly poured the cloudy liquid past her lips, tilting her head back slightly. Though she swallowed it quickly, the forewarned bitter taste made her cough and sputter.

While she was distracted by the taste of the draught, Kadrun gathered her discarded cloak into a tight bundle with his free hand and put the ragged pillow that was on the bed on top. When she seemed to have recovered from the pungent taste, he eased her down onto the pillow again.

“I will make you tea. It is…” he paused for a second, searching for the right Ænglisc word, “…soothing.”

There was a pot suspended over the fire with water left from earlier that was still warm, and he soon had his wooden tankard filled with fragrant chamomile tea. He helped the woman, whose breathing was already coming more deep and even, to drink the tea. When the tankard was empty, he eased her head back onto the pillow.

Almost immediately, her eyes closed, and she gained the slow and deep breathing of sleep.

Kadrun took a deep breath and brushed a hand over his eyes, relaxing for the first time since he had heard her frantic cry for help. But when he looked down at the sleeping woman again he knew he could not relax quite yet.

With the most urgent tasks taken care off, he finally took his thick fur coat and heavy boots off. He added more wood to the fire and stoked it, more to increase the light source than for warmth, though the neglected walls of the old cottage did not do much to keep out the autumn chill. Taking off his leather bracers, he rolled up the sleeves of his linen shirt and got the pot of water and a washcloth from his pack and brought it over to the bed. Methodically and gently, he began washing the blood off the sleeping woman’s arms and hands. Wringing the cloth out and dipping it in the water again, he moved on to the stains on her face and neck, trying not to get her clothes too wet in the process. Though she let out the occasional low whimper when the damp cloth touched her skin, she did not wake again. 

As he dried the water from her face with the edge of one of his sleeves, he took the first proper look at her face, cleared from the veil of congealed blood. She looked even younger to him now, and so _vulnerable_.

Glancing down her form, he was struck by how fragile and small she seemed. He was not used to cordial interactions with humans, especially not human women. He had refused to actively attack women or children during his career as a raider, and the memory of the few occasions, after they had faced particularly arduous resistance, that his peers had decided to claim the bodies of the defeated humans as part of the spoils still sickened him. So far, he had never gotten close to a human girl without her immediately fleeing his sight, and he could hardly blame them.

His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed, in the increased fire light, that the blood on her left hip — which he had thought was only another stain caused by her profusely bleeding arm — was from another wound. To examine this injury better he would need to take off her sleeveless outer gown; noticing how torn up and covered in mud it was reinforced the decision.

He undid her leather belt and slipped it out from under her and started pulling the twilled wool gown up and off her, pausing to lift her limp body and ease it off her torso. With the outer dress out of the way, he noticed that the dried blood had made the fabric of her thin inner smock stick to the ragged skin at the edges of the wounds.

Hesitating, Kadrun’s brow furrowed and his hand hovered over her. Though she seemed to be fast asleep and would be unaware of it, he was reluctant to violate her privacy, with the injury so near an intimate area. From what he knew of humans, they tended to be more precious about their modesty than he was accustomed to, at least during interactions between genders.

Wetting the washcloth again, he pressed it against the dried blood to soak and loosen it. As some of the blood washed away, however, it soon became clear that the wounds peeking through the linen fabric were too deep and extensive to leave open. There was nothing else for it; he would need to get under the garment to tend to it properly.

He briefly studied her face for any signs that she was waking up. Finding none, he reached for his small knife again and cut a slit in the fabric from just above the wound at her hip — carefully separating the now damp fabric from the edges of the wound — all the way to the hem. This enabled him to arrange the two parts of the skirt so it exposed only the relevant stretch of skin.

As he carefully washed away all the old blood, the middle of the three most pronounced gashes began slowly filling with blood again. This gash was the deepest and longest, running from the crest of the hip bone and curving down and back towards the lower part of her buttock. After another hurried trip to his knapsack, he set to work dressing the gashes. Kadrun turned her hips slowly so she rested on the right hip, and packed the deepest parts with dried peat moss, and then reached for the strip cut from a worn tunic that he used as bandages. Unravelling the fabric strip a few handwidths, he pressed it lightly against the moss and stretched it to continue wrapping it along the wound as it curved back. 

As the linen of her cut smock fell back fully, his hand froze an inch from her naked bottom.

‘Ah.’ Belatedly, he realised that wrapping the bandages properly would be practically impossible without getting up close and personal with the most intimate parts of the unconscious woman after all.

He let out a frustrated huff, feeling silly for his fruitless attempts at sparing her modesty when she was not even awake to notice either way. The exasperation helped him to dispassionately focus on the task at hand.

As he lifted her lower back up to pass the strip under her, a pattern of bruises on her right hip caught his eye. Pausing with the bandage he leant forward to confirm his initial reaction. Indeed, the purplish bruising, with yellowing edges showing it was perhaps a week old, clearly formed the shape of fingers wrapping around her hip. ‘That’s certainly not from today’s wolf encounter…’, Kadrun thought solemnly. It struck him that the bruises presumably had something to do with why this unarmed, young woman found herself alone in a dangerous part of the forest in the first place.

Once he had spotted the older bruises left by what appeared to be a man’s hand, he discovered additional ones up and down her hips and upper thighs in the same shade of faded purple each time he passed the bandage round her hips. The furrow between his brows increased with each new bruise found. When all the open gashes were covered, he secured the end of the bandage by folding it under a previous layer and tying a square knot.

As he was studying his patient’s face, as if he could find the answers to his questions about how their paths ended up crossing in its features, the woman began to shiver. Shaking himself from his reverie, he shook out as much of the dirt and leaves from her cloak as he cold, and then covered her with the cleanest side, tucking it in at her sides.

Kadrun unrolled his own bedroll and spread it out on the floor between the bed and the door of the cramped cottage. After checking the fire and putting one last log on it, he got in his bedroll and told himself there would be plenty of time to learn more about the woman he had rescued, and could not help but find intriguing, in the morning. Sleep washed over him almost instantly.


End file.
